The Potion in the Attic (Part 3)

View Part 1 of The Potion in the Attic.
View Part 2 of The Potion in the Attic.

Tony dropped the bottles off at the frat party the next morning. He had a whole excuse planned about how he was his own sister, but no one even seemed to ask or care about where the original Tony was, nor even asked his name. A few of his frat brother did take a moment to hit on him. Tony shrugged it off with his attention focused on tonight.

Time passed slowly that day as he waited for the party. And despite the anticipation, he still ended up arriving about an hour after the start time. It was pretty obvious that they had already started using the bottles he had brought. He approached a group of three women, which he recognized as now opposite gender versions of three of his frat brothers.

“Hey!” One named Rhys slurred, “It’s Tony’s sister! What’s yer name?”

“Tonya,” Tony said, proudly able to use the name he had come up with earlier.

“Well, when you see your brother, you need to thank him! We mixed a few of those liquors he had you bring...they are amazing! They’re so smooth going down, and yet I feel, like, really good in a way I can’t place. And the babes aren’t put off by me when I talk to them! These drinks are like magic, man!”

Tonya smiled. Did Rhys even realize he now had a woman’s body? Did he know the two women he was speaking with were actually James and Byron? How much more would they drink? How much more would they change? And what about the rest of the party? The night was young and so was the chaos!

429-B

Today we are reviewing footage from Test Subject 429-B. Given the results of earlier test 414-A, this time we ensured all sharp objects in the room have been removed. As you can observe, the initial reactions of the test subject upon waking up the chair in a body different from their own is a state of panic. This has been nearly universal in all of our cross-gender body swap experiments with only about 2% not displaying such a reaction. The remaining 2% display an instant outward sense of curiosity.

Now, the reason we are observing this subject today is the period after the panic. Once he realizes he is a woman, he proceeds to get quite angry. When he discovers his new body is not as strong as his previous one, this only makes him angrier.

...And yet, it doesn’t last. Despite the period of anger, he too eventually falls into a previous of curiosity where the new body is sufficiently explored and ultimately enjoyed.

Everyone

“Hello!?” Max shouted into the security camera at the discount store, “Does anyone actually work here? Can anyone explain what’s going on? I just walked in here, and I swapped bodies with this woman! I tried to ask the people working on the floor or at the registers, but they said they weren’t swapped too and weren’t actually workers. Does anyone know what’s going on? Unless...there’s no one there, is there? You’ve all been swapped too, and no one cares? Right? Has everyone in the entire world swapped bodies? What the hell is going on here?”

Siblings

When their father passed, the funeral was the first time Jeff and Angie had seen each other in years. The siblings had grown distant and didn’t have much to talk about anymore. They did both agree to help their mom throw out some of their father’s junk a few days later.

When Angie arrived, Jeff was already tossing stuff from the basement. It was where their father made all sorts of strange inventions -- most of which never worked. Despite a quick hello, Angie decided to work on the other side of the basement away from Jeff. The first thing she tried to lift was simply too heavy.

“Could you help me with this?” She asked.

Jeff shrugged and came over to help her. But the moment they both touched the device, it began to turn on. The device shot electrical bolts that hit both of them, knocking them to the ground.

Jeff awoke first and realized something was wrong. He and Angie had swapped bodies! He woke her up, explained what had happened, and told her they needed to try using the device again. He held onto the side Angie had tried to lift while she gripped the other side. It began to turn on again and even shoot some bolts out, but they remained in each other’s bodies.

“We need to figure this out!” Angie exclaimed with a look of pure fear, “I do NOT want to be stuck in your body!”

“Same!” Jeff echoed.

Uglies

Theresa had to admit that she had never seem too many unattractive people on Exchane Island. It didn’t make much sense. Surely, that potential to be good-looking for a few weeks would draw a good number of ugly people, which would increase the chances of actually seeing someone unattractive.

About midway through the week, she did spy a gangly woman with thick bushy eyebrows and an overbite. Surely, this woman had answers. She first asked about who she really was.

“My name is Enrique, and I’m actually a professional body builder,” The gangly woman answered, “I usually spend my time on the other side of the island, but it’s probably good is Carol sees her body at least once on her trip. People sometimes freak out if they don’t.”

“Other side of the island?” Theresa asked.

Enrique sighed, realizing he probably already said too much, “Look, we’re not supposed to talk about it, but there’s no rule against telling you. The resort hires a bunch of attractive people to swap with the uglies on this side. We get pretty paid well too!”

“My original body is not ugly!” Theresa objected.

“Have you seen it more than on on this trip? No, right? Well, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but, yes, your original body must be totally ugly. That’s just the way it works...”

Flicking the Switch

“Can you fix it?” Minh asked nervously as she clutched her hands together.

“I think so,” Jonathan explained as he replaced one of the vacuum tubes, “But I never expected this thing to be able to swap people’s bodies! And it was surely an accident that you were involved in this at all! You were jogging by outside at what I guess was simply the wrong time. We’re both just lucky I had spare parts.”

However, when Jonathan flicked the switch to turn his machine on and off -- nothing happened, or so he thought. He flicked it on and off several times, wondering why it didn’t swap him and Minh back to their own bodies. Of course, the various neighbors he was swapping with each flick of the switch were far less pleased with his careless attempts to get back.

Pointing Out the Paradox

The woman appeared in a flash of light in Jin’s garage. She appeared to have a human face with many robots parts. Was she an android? A cyborg?

“Your invention. Have you turned it on yet?” She asked.

“I mean, yeah. But it’s still warming up,” Jin replied.

“We need to destroy it.”

“Wait, how do you even know about my invention? I haven’t told anyone.”

“I’m from the future. And if we don’t destroy it now, it will bring all sorts of pain to humanity.”

“Oh, come on! This’ll do good in the world.”

“It does, until powerful people corrupt it. We need to destroy it now.”

“And why should I believe you?”

“Because I AM you.”

“Oh, come on, you’re a chick!”

“Biological and technological replacement parts are quite limited in the future. I took what I could get to survive for the past 500 years! But your wasting time; we need to destroy your machine now, and then hopefully I will just blink out of existence.”

“If we succeeded in doing that, wouldn’t that have prevented you from showing up in the first place?”

Back in Time for Breakfast

In the days after the Great Shift, Ava had been worried about her brother Mattias. He was the only one she cared about that she hadn’t heard from. For weeks, she feared the worst. Ultimately, she was surpried to hear from him via email. It turned out he had swapped into a woman’s body halfway across the world in the Middle East. Trying to explain who he really was turned out to be a chore due to language differences and a good number of woman trying to use the Shift as a reason to leave their husbands.

Getting back to the states took several more weeks, but Ava was there to pick him up at the airport first thing in the morning. When Matias mentioned he was hungry, she brought him to a diner. He proceded to order a beer and an excessive amount of bacon.

After chomping on a piece of bacon and taking a swig of beer, he looked over to his sister. “Thank you,” He said, “I know it’s a little early for booze, but they just don’t have this over there! And I can’t wait to go shopping for some clothes and ditch these outfits. Maybe we can go together? Bring mom and dad? It’s going to be so weird seeing them in new bodies, especially since they are no older than us now, right?”

Instead

Todd didn’t know how the app got installed on his phone, but the fact that it could swap body parts, personality traits, or just about anything else was far too entertaining. It would probably cause chaos if anyone else noticed, but it seemed that Todd was the only one who noticed the changes. Eventually, he decided to try to bring his friend Brian along for the fun.

It seemed that as long as both he and Brian touched the phone at the same time, they could both notice the changes. And together, they caused all sorts of swaps in the mall for hours.

But then Todd had an evil idea. He aimed the phone at a couple kissing on a bench, intending to swap their bodies. But while he kept the woman as a target, he secretly switched the other person from her boyfriend to Brian. When Brian touched the phone so he could be aware of the swap, he suddenly found himself in the woman’s body while his own body was now sitting on the bench making out with the woman’s boyfriend.

“What the hell, man!?” Brian shouting as Todd broke out laughing. Brian grabbed for the phone, but Todd wouldn’t let go.

The struggle began to cause all sorts of other swaps. One of the swaps caused Brian to switch races with an Asian man, and another resulted in both Todd and Brian to swap clothes with manequins from a couture dress store. This was when Todd realized how dangerous this app could be. If they could swap clothes with mannnequins, what if they had swapped something more consequential? In his moment of concern, Brian had managed to wrestle the phone out of Todd’s hands. However, Brian noticed his body had long gone. So with the possibility of getting back to normal out of the question, he looked toward Todd with the idea of getting revenge instead.

Escaping the Experiment

Joe’s heels clicked on the linoleum. He was sure his original body had to be stored in one of these chambers. He just had to find it, bring it up to the body switching machine to swap back, and then get the hell out of this place. It took him several hours to check each one until he finally found it. He considered himself lucky not to run into any security, but once he opened the chamber, he realized why they may not even be necessary. Joe’s new smaller female body seemed barely able to move the weight of his former male body. There was no way he’d be able to drag it all the way to the machine. Which meant he had two choices. He could wait around here and see what sort of other experiments were done on him, or he could escape and live the life of a woman forever.

Some Advice

“Are you...are you hitting on me?” Brianna was struggling to not laugh in response, “I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s sort of cute, I guess, but did you think you had any sort of chance? I mean, I get that before the Shift, you were probably a guy right?”

“Yeah,” Brett mumbled as he nodded.

“It shows in your frumpy wardrobe choices. And, so, let me give you some advice. I’m a woman, and I’ve always been a woman. I’m not a lesbian either. But I’ve hit by plenty of guys like you since the Great Shift happened. They all still want to hit on women, but only, like, girlie women, you know? And yet they’re all frumpy like you. So here’s my advice: Put on a dress, get dolled up in makeup, throw on some high heels. You’ll find plenty of guys stuck in women’s bodies ready to throw themselves at you. You’ll get your lesbian relationship, and you’ll probably have your pick of them. But keep going after women like me? Eh, I just doubt you’ll have much luck.”

Single Dad

Grant had been having a hard time since his wife died. Not only was he dealing with the loss, but he also had to be a single parent for his young daughter as well -- she was barely old enough to understand what had happened. He often wished there could be a female role model in his daughter’s life, and that he could connect with her better.

One morning he got his wish in a way he never would have imagined. Waking up as a woman was a shock, but Grant told himself he could deal with it -- and, in fact, he nearly burst into tears when his daughter called him “Mommy.” Hearing that gave him the confidence that he could deal with being a different gender.

But that wasn’t the full extent of the wish’s consequences. Grant soon found himself unable to resist any request from his daughter. Candy for breakfast? Of course! Time to go to work? Grant had to put on the “princess clothes” his daughter wanted him to wear. At least he was able to drop he off at daycare without her objecting!

Still, as he walked down the street to his job, he felt absolutely silly in this outfit. Surely, no one would take him seriously at the sparkle division of the unicorn investment firm where he worked looking like this!

Nurse!

“Nurse Yumi!” The doctor shouted, “Please pull yourself together! We need your help or we’ll lose the patient!”

“He’s already gone,” She replied flatly.

“I’m telling you we can still save him. Are you questioning my medical expertise?”

“No, I’m saying...I AM him. His spirit is gone. If left his body, and its in...here.” She said as she gestured to her heart.

“Quit with the gibberish and get over here.”

And so she walked over and listened to what the doctor told her, but she knew it was hopeless. She knew she was even qualified to be a nurse; that she was actually just the old man dying in front of her but now in the body of this nurse instead. It would be easier for everyone if they simply let her former body pass on.

IF

Chris felt pretty awkward after the Great Shift. He found himself at the mall and inside the body of a young woman. According to her out of state ID, she was nineteen, so he guessed she went to the local college. People were pairing off with the person they swapped with, so he figured he should try to get home to find speak with the person inside his body.

He was quite taken aback when an older woman approached him with a simple introduction, “So, like, that’s my body.”

“What?” Chris asked.

“So, you’re me, and I’m you. We are stuck in each other’s bodies, blah, blah, blah...I want my body back.”

“I don’t think there’s a way to swap back. I don’t know how we swapped in the first place,” He said as a part of him wondered if this woman was just trying to lay claim to a younger body.

“No, there’s like totally a machine at the university that can do it! I’m sure a lot of people will be rushing there once they know about it; we can beat the rush.”

“Well, hold on. Even IF this is your body...you are most certainly NOT in my body. While I didn’t want to be stuck in this body...I really don’t want to be stuck in THAT body.”

The woman seemed annoyed before admitting, “Fair.” And then she added, “So let’s get your body THEN will go to the university to swap back. I just hope we’re not too late...”

I Dunno.

Bob had thought he was going crazy. It started with little things seemingly being in the wrong place, going from one location to another like magic. Then the changes got bigger. His office seemed to have a new layout; there were people at work he didn’t recognize. He ultimately decided to leave early and pick up some medicine from the drug store, so he could go home and get some rest. That’s when things got really weird.

Signs in a foreign language popped up in the store. His body shrank in his suit as he changed races and genders. As he pulled out his wallet, he pulled out his card. “Mihn Vu? Who the hell is that?” He asked.

“Happening to you, too, eh?” The cashier asked.

“Wait...you can tell something is wrong also!? What the hell is happening? Is all of humanity transforming into women? What’s going on?”

“I dunno. But it seems to be random. Guys like us turning into women, sure! But I’ve definitely seen the other way around a few times today as well. Sometimes people know it’s happening to them; other times they’re oblivious.”

“Oblivious? But how is it possible to just forget who you are! I mean, I know I used to be...um...used to be...” It was on the tip of his tongue, but the only name Bob could come up with was ‘Mihn,’ which he was sure was wrong. Wasn’t it?